Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Except this isn’t a jungle. It’s an alien planet. And I didn’t think anyone lived here but us.
16
MADDIE
It’s so weird to round the corner in what is an uninhabited crevasse on a deserted, icy planet populated with nothing but other crash-landed aliens…and realize that there was someone else here before you.
Long, long before you.
I reach out and touch one of the even, neatly stacked stones that make up the crumbled wall. At my feet are more even stones, covered by a thin layer of ice and debris. Cobblestones. These stones stretch ahead, and as I let my gaze move, I see more stones, more cobbled road…and then ahead, I see buildings.
Tucked against the walls of the crevasse are a bunch of squat, stone buildings. They’re square and even, lining a street, and if I ever had any doubt that this stuff was man-(or alien-)made, those have been firmly put aside. Someone lived here. Someone lived here a long time ago…or is living here now.
“This isn’t a ship,” I tell Hassen. “It’s a city.”
He frowns, trying to digest this word. “It is a place that people live? Like a tribal cave, but in the open?”
“Right.”
A tribal cave in the open is right on the money. It’s not a city like I know of, with skyscrapers and suburbs. This is a Paleolithic city of some kind, tucked along the walls of the rocky canyon. The cobbled road underneath my feet stretches out and leads to neat rows of small, squatty-looking brick buildings with no roofs. They’re square and set in neat rows along the streets, almost as if someone took a grid and placed them all exactly where they needed to be. The size of each one is uniform, about as big as a bedroom back at home, and farther down the street, the buildings get bigger, one the size of a house. Still no roof, though.
It’s all very strange. It’s like all the roofs disappeared and so…everyone left? But that makes no sense.
“I don’t know that anyone is here.” I don’t see anyone moving around, and the feeling I get is one of…stillness. Quiet. Emptiness. In a place this big, surely it would have some noise. I stop in my tracks and start counting buildings.
I stop when I get to forty, because, okay, that’s a lot of buildings. There’s more than that, but it tells me plenty—this was a settlement of some kind. Is a settlement. “Could it be…metlaks?”
At my side, Hassen makes a sound of disgust. “They do not create things. They do not live in ships.”
“Cities.”
“Cities,” he amends.
“And your people didn’t build this?”
“If they did, would they not live here?”
Yeah, I guess they would. It doesn’t seem natural to leave behind a perfectly good city. “So where did they go? Unless they’re here and we can’t see them.” I think of the metlaks that were stalking us earlier, and draw a little closer to Hassen, spooked.
“There are no tracks,” he tells me, gesturing at the path before us, then turning and waving a hand at the trail we’ve left behind us. “If there were people, we would see traces of them.”
“I know. Logic says there’s no one here, but…”
He nods. “I feel the same way.” He releases my hand and cups his mouth. “Ho! Is anyone there?”
His shout echoes off the canyon walls. It’s eerie, but effective. After a moment, I’m pretty convinced we’re alone here, too. I get brave enough to take a few steps forward, looking up. Sunlight spills in from above, but the walls are sheer and I don’t see any paths or handholds. No one’s coming down from this direction.
So while this is wild and strange…it also feels a little safer than I expect. “Do you think we should stay here tonight?”
“Here…where?” Hassen looks at me curiously. “In one of the hollows?”
“I think those were houses, though I don’t know where the roofs went.” I shrug. “We could put a skin over a corner and make ourselves a little nest for the night. Explore the place and see what we can find. Maybe there’s a hint as to where these people went.”
“Are they all dead?” he asks.
“Good question.” Eek, I hope not. “One way to find out, though. Shall we go exploring?”
Hassen looks troubled. “I…do not know. This feels like walking into a hunter cave left by a…a stranger. I do not know how I feel.”
I guess strangers are a big concept to a guy that grew up knowing all the people on the planet. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell him, holding my hand out. “We’ll check it out together. I’d rather see what’s down here than go back up and face the metlaks.”
He nods slowly, then takes my hand, his spear gripped tight in his other. “Let us see what we can find, then.”